Remus and Mundungus, in the Leaky Cauldron
by AshNox
Summary: "…So, do I know her?" Mundungus asked. "'It's a small enough world, in'it. She knew you were a Werewolf, right?" Remus nodded. He was drunk. He didn't know what to do. He was so angry and so miserable. How could anyone do that to a baby? At least Fenir waited till children were old enough to run away, he didn't try and infect his own child in the womb.


**AN: This is fanfiction and anything recognisable belongs to J K Rowling.**

Mundungus stunk. He had always stunk but it was different now. His cheek was still against the table, his hair a ratty orange tangle. The reddened skin peeled away from the sticky wood as he sat up, looking at Remus in silence.

He didn't bother saying anything. That was one of his charms, apparently. Which was ironic, as Remus had rarely seen him shut up, apart from when he was drunk into inertia, or passed out.

.

They were in the Leaky Cauldron. It was still empty, barely opened for the day.

Presumably Mundungus had been asleep on the table all night. He should have been thrown out. Tom wasn't usually stupid. Remus would have thrown him out.

.

"I'd have thrown you out." He stated. "Last night." Mundungus nodded slowly, with little expression. Remus left him at the table to pay for a bottle of Firewiskey. Tom passed him two glasses, without being asked, but Remus didn't notice, thinking about paying with Tonks's money. It made him feel sicker than he already did but he paid anyway, sure Firewiskey was the only think that would reduce the nausea.

.

He ignored Mundungs's move to take the bottle, pouring it himself. The gold chain around Mundungus's hairy wrist bore the Black crest. Remus watched it appear again from beneath the dirty cuff as he reached for the glass. Mundungus noticed, but he didn't say anything, adjusting his sleeve with a brown toothed smile.

.

A hungry mouthful of Whiskey coated Remus's throat with warmth. "Did you steal that?" He asked. "Or did he give it to you?"

Mundungus took another mouthful of Firewhiskey and shrugged.

"It meks no diff'rence, Remus. He didn' care what went. He hated them, didn' he. Who do yer think yer are, the Potta' kid?"

"It all belongs to him now." Remus said. Mundungus's narrow lips split into another toothy grin, but there was nothing malicious about it. He took the gold chain off his wrist and slid it across the table.

"For the whiskey." He said. "Don' say I never pay me way. Not special to yer, was i'?"

"It was probably his fathers." Remus said, his hand hovering over the chain before he pushed it back across the table. "And it belongs to Harry."

"Kid's got more Galleons than he'll ever need. Sadly I can' say the same for you or I, Remus."

"Maybe he wants the memories." Remus said.

"Don't imagine Orion Black would have had much time for 'Arry Bleedin' Potta'. You look like shit, Remus."

"It's an occupational hazard of being a Werewolf. What was it like, in Azkaban?"  
"Heard abou' tha', did yer?" Mundungus chuckled, swilling the last of his drink. "Not so bad for a petty criminal like me'self. Not like being a top security headcase. Wasn' sorry to ge' out of there thou."

.

He considered the empty glass thoughtfully before reaching for the bottle. Remus took it and poured refills for both of them. He felt tired and sick. Or sick and tired. The whiskey wasn't helping enough, and Mundungus smelt like the worst of Grimmauld Place, which was better than the best of anything else.

He picked the gold chain up, looking at the stamped crest, the heavy loops that made up the links, before he passed it back to Mundungus, watching him refastened it around his wrist, the gold yellow against the ginger hairs.

.

"Where you lookin' for somethin'?" He added, accepting the last of the whiskey and sipping it more slowly.

"No." The certainty in his own voice depressed Remus more. "You killed Alastor." He added. It lacked even the most basic attempt at anger and Mundungus treated it the same.

"Stuck on the back of a broom an' a Death Eater shoots the killing curse at you, what would yer have done, Remus? Held on tight and hoped Alastor'll fly out a the way in time? Cause he didn't, did 'e? He should have apparated too. Not any help to 'Arry dead, is he? Only reason that lot wish I'd stayed was so the curse could a hit me instead. Tha's not very nice now, is i'?"

"No…" Mundungus followed Remus's eyes to the Firewhiskey at the bar.

"Ma'be we should get another one for ol' times sake."

"What old times?" Remus said, but he did get up and returned with another bottle.

.

"…Ol' times." Mundungus said. "New times, if yer like. You're flush, aren't yer? Did you win on the 'orses?"

"I got married." He said, washing it away with more whiskey. Mundungus laughed until he coughed brown phlegm onto the floor. Remus watched him, dully.

.

"…Congratulations." He said, finally, face straightened.

"I left her." Remus added.

"Oh… Well… Have another drink." Remus took the bottle as Dung reached for it. "Yer want t' talk about i'?" He added, considerately.

"You always were a good listener." Remus said. "If it meant you could share a bottle."

"I heard you were a rubbish lis'ener." Mundungus grinned, toothily. "Why did you get married? I was married once, yer know?"

"No, I didn't know that. Poor women." Mundungus nodded in heartfelt agreement.

"I was young and foolish. Kids and all." He shrugged. "We all do daft things."

"It's nice to be loved." Remus said, stiffly. "It's the nicest feeling in the world. This was beyond stupid though." Mundungus nodded, without passing comment. Maybe Sirius was right. Maybe he was a good listener. Maybe Remus was a terrible listener who couldn't shut up and just listen. Had Sirius really said that? To Mundungus?

It was strange to feel angry with Sirius. A foreign forgotten feeling, which opened a fresh ache and fresh guilt in his chest. You can't be angry with the dead. "Did he say that?" He asked. Anger was the right feeling for Sirius listing his faults to Mundungus. A better feeling than a pointless wanting to know more, more of anything that had once existed of a person that existed no more.

Mundungus was a good listener. He'd nodded thoughtfully to the question, mulled it over in sympathetic silence. "Did he say what?" He asked, when he'd waited as long as possible for Remus to say something else.

"That I was a 'rubbish listener'." Remus clarified and gulped another mouthful that felt more like fire than whiskey.

"Oh. Maybe." Mundungus shrugged, hiding behind his cup. "We was talkin' about your marriage, Remus. Married at nineteen, I was. Two kids an all. Grown up now, I g'ess."

"I g'ess." Remus said. The whiskey felt cold in his stomach. He thought he would be sick. Mundungus smiled at him with brown teeth and glassy blue eyes. Remus imagined him with Sirius, talking about him, and felt like hitting him in the face, across the table, in the quiet pub.

A cold sweat had left his skin clammy but his stomach ceased its relentless churning. How could Tonks be pregnant? How could she have done that? That was the most selfish thing anyone had ever done. How could you damn your own unborn child like that? On purpose.

"How did you end up with kids?" He said, spat it rather, across the table. Mundungus laughed. He took the bottle firmly, before Remus could snatch it, and refilled both their glasses.

"The usual way." He said. "Think my lad works round her somewhere. Don't know what my gal's doing. Just like her mother, believing all the lies that bitch tells them about me."

"I don't imagine she has to make up much." Remus suggested, coldly.

"Yer' all sympathy." Mundungus said. "Don't mind tha' I'm baring me heart 'ere, will yer? 'E wasn' kiddin', was 'e 'bout yer bein' a good lis'ener? 'E said you c'uld drink 'im under the table, an' I'm less sure about that."

"I've been drinking all morning." Remus told him. "And why would he say that? In what possible context would he say that? I don't want to know." He added, sharply. "I have to do something."

"Sober up, buy some flowers and shift off home, if you've any sense. How big was yer 'walkin' out'?"

"Big. I don't want to talk about that. And Sirius… Sirius was a bloody awful person to talk to. The worst. You couldn't tell him anything. The best you could hope was that he'd lock himself up and mutter lists of stars angrily under his breath and the worst was trying to kill people."

.

"…So, do I know her?" Mundungus asked. "'It's a small enough world, in'it. She knew you were a Werewolf, right?"

Remus nodded. He was drunk. He didn't know what to do. He was so angry and so miserable. How could anyone do that _to a baby_? At least Fenir waited till children were old enough to run away, he didn't try and infect his own child in the womb.

"I can't do this." He gasped. He felt like he couldn't breathe properly. Like there wasn't enough air in the room, or the shirt was too tight around his neck, although he could feel two buttons unfastened as he fumbled with it.

"Come on then." Mundungus grasped his arm, hauling him out of the chair. He took him out into the quiet yard, where beer kegs waited to be collected and weeds grew through the cracked cobblestones that Remus had just slumped on. He dung his fingers into his hair, his head banging, thoughts relentlessly spinning under his hands grip.

.

"I'm thirty six." He said, breath still uneven. "What's wrong with me?"  
"So much." Mundungs grinned, sinking against the opposite wall. "Wish I was thirty six."

"There's so much wrong with me." Remus answered his own question, the same. He didn't list all the things, because Mundungs knew most of them. "I have fought Voldemort, packs of Werewolves… Why can't I do this?"

"Dunno." Mundungus said, picking a stringy plant and stripping it of its leaves. "You always seemed sorted t' the point of smug, t' me. Sounds impressive, fightin' _packs_ of Werewolves."

Remus swept his fringe out of his face and managed a smile. "It's not that hard." He said. "They're very structured. You have to take out the top dog, and the rest usually respect that. It's not something I did on a daily basis. Or fighting Voldemort. They're just the things I remind myself I _have_ done, when I seem incapable of getting dressed in the morning or walking through my own door. I held onto Harry. I stopped him going through the veil."

"Yeah, I know. Mundungus nodded. "You made sure he was alright."

"He's not alright. Undesirable Number One. They're going to kill him. He doesn't realize. And his friends. I just hexed him."

"You jus' hexed 'Arry Potta?"

"This morning." Remus looked over Mundungus's face thoughtfully. His straggly orange hair was the same length as Sirius's, and in the same state of disarray. He'd always hated that. Mundungus's was now streaked with an occasional grey strand, nothing that showed yet. Remus closed his eyes, tipping his head back against the wall, feeling the alcohol messing with his balance and making his head feel like it was spinning.

"Yer' doin' well. No one else knows were 'Arry is."

"He's at Grimmauld Place with his friends. They're just little children."

"Think of the shit you lot caused at that age." Mundungus offered, bracingly. "So how come you hexed the specy git?"

"He called me a coward. Told me I was trying to be like Sirius."

"Really? There's an unlikely combination if eva I 'erd one. A cowardly Sirius?" Remus humoured it with a rather genuine laugh. That _was_ an unlikely combination.

"One or the other, I suppose. I just want to help him. I've got to be able to help someone I care about…"

"Look like you need to help yourself." Mundungus muttered.

"Oh, shut up!" Remus snarled, shoving himself angrily back onto his feet.

"You always did, Remus." Mundungus added. He sounded quite sincere but the Firewhiskey had kicked in and he was finding it hard to repress his grin.

"I can look however I want." Remus said, angrily. "I could transfigure this shit into the kings robes, if I wanted to."

"You really should." Mandungus laughed. Remus ignored him, resting his pounding head against the wall.

"I promised Sirius I'd look after Harry." He said, quietly. "If anything happened to him."

"Promises don't mean shit once someone's dead." Mundungus said, bitterly enough to be thinking about promises he had himself made. Remus let his head bang slightly against the cold solid wall.

"I don't want him to be dead." He stated, sadly.

"You want more Firewhiskey." Mundungus assured him.

"Yes, I do." Remus agreed. "And a room."

"A room?" Mundungus asked, uncertainly.

"Yes." Remus said, to the wall. Mundungus nodded, coming back to accept a handful of coins and ducking back into the Leaky Cauldron.

He was so distracted that he got halfway across the room before he realised who was standing at the bar. It was the fault of the hair, that had done it. The hair was completely different. But the voice was unmistakable. Mundungus froze, utterly exposed, and then he hurriedly put himself behind a pilar, that at least partially hid him from view while he tried to think what to do.

"…Like I said, he was around earlier in the day." Tom said, nervously over-polishing a glass.

"When was he around? And when did he leave?" The sharp response made Mundungs twitch nervously. The last thing he needed was Sirius's bloody cousin trying to kill him, now.

"…It's been a busy morning. He was here, having a quiet drink. I'm not sure when he went, not long ago."

The hair, that had once been a spectacular princess pink, was gradually changing from dirty dishwater grey to blood red, the colour oozing out from her scalp and spreading root to end. Tom regarded it, nervously. "I wish I could be more help." He added. "Perhaps it slipped his mind."

"He's been gone for five days!" Dora said, her voice starting to rise. "It hasn't slipped his mind. He's run away, like a bloody infantile cowardly skulking dog!" Tom, while startled by the unusual string of insults had just noticed Mundungus skulking behind the pilar. Mundungus had let his breath out in surprised relief that the him Tonks was looking for wasn't _him;_ to murder _him_ for apparating off the back of Moody's broom. Not that her reason for being there would make a difference. If she saw him he was in the shit.

.

"Why don't you come round the back?" Tom suggested, putting the very shiny glass down finally. "Give yourself a minute to catch your breath."  
"I don't want to catch my breath!" Dora shrugged his hand off her arm, angrily, her eyes growing black and wilder. "I want my bloody husband!"  
"Anyone would be upset." Tom said, still trying to coax her out of the room. "I'm sure it's a misunderstanding. These are stressful times."

"You touch me again and I'll hex the skin off your fingers." Tonks snarled, angrily. "He's a bloody coward and he is _not_ doing this to me! Two weeks ago he was shoving a ring on my finger and promising me the world."

"Congratulations, by the way." Tom muttered, nervously. Tonk's glared at him like he'd gone insane. Mundungus stared at both of them, trying not to laugh.

"_Two weeks_!" Tonks shouted again. "_We've been married for two bloody weeks_!" Tom didn't repond, Tonks had her wand out, clenched in a white fist. "…It's a bloody joke." She added, miserably.

.

"He's a decent man." Tom ventured, uncertainly. "There'll be a very good reason."  
"There is a reason." Tonks hissed, her eyes worryingly starting to move over the other patrons. "We're having a baby… That bloody cowardly _shit_!"

She growled angrily at the bar. Tom poured her a large glass of Firewiskey but she didn't take it. In, what felt horribly like slow-motion, her eyes moved across the room until the fixed on Mundungus, trying to hide behind the narrow pilar.

"_Oh my God_!" She snarled, snatching back for her wand and flawing his fleeing figure with a tripping jinx. "You worthless piece of animal dung!" She screeched, punching him in the head and yanking his hair like a drunk Muggle.

"Leave off! Ow! Tonks! Gerroff!" He covered his face as much as he could, wincing as she laid into him. He was actually grateful for the Muggle assault. He'd expected the killing curse. She was a Black after all.

"You left Alastor to die! You coward! You pathetic hateful coward!" She screamed, spit flying from her mouth as she ripped at his hair, kneeing him in the side.

"I know where Lupin is!" Mundungus yelled. He felt her freeze. So he was right. He hadn't 'married', he had married _Nymphadora Tonks _and got the crazy bitch pregnant with some furry Werewolf baby!

"...What?" She hissed, red eyed glaring at him. Extended nails holding him in place.

"I know where Lupin is." He said again. "Remus Lupin. He went to see 'Arry."

"_You left Alastor to die_." Tonks hissed at him again. She looked insane. "He was brave and good! You… You horrible _shit_!"

"Remus Lupin." Mundungus said again, watching her panting, glaring with mental red eyes.

"…Where?" She said, finally.

"…Upstairs." Mundungus said. "He's got a room here."

"You what?!" Tonks swung round, taking in Tom's shocked face. She flung Mundungus as hard as she could at the nearest table and slammed into the back of the Leaky Cauldron.

"Apparate! Now!" Mundungus staggered back to his feet, snatching Remus's rags as he hurried into the room.

"Shit! I have to talk to her, don't I?" Remus jabbered, clutching his arm rather drunkenly.

"Yes. If you want to _die_." Mundungus said, dumped some of Remus's gold on the bar, snatched a fresh bottle of firewhiskey and apparated them both to the far end of Knockturn Alley.

"There's a guest house by here." He said, bouncing off a wall as he tried to leave the apparition site in a straight line.

"I know it." Remus agreed, staggering through the door and forking out more coins for a room, apparently having already forgotten he'd given Mundungus enough.


End file.
